Garmin - Venu Smartwatch 43mm Fiber-Reinforced Polymer - Black With Silicone Band

The Venu has a great display, awesome GPS acquisition, and a ton of fitness tracking features. It looks great, and is relatively lightweight and the stock band is comfortable. Battery life is also great, I had it on for 24 hours, using only smart watch features, and the battery only went down to 81%. However, some seemingly simple smart watch functions do not work, such as the Weather widget. I spent two frustrating days following all of Garmin’s online suggestions for iOS users, to no avail. This is a big, recurring complaint in other online reviews. I finally had to get over the fact that I need to look at my phone for weather info. I can’t believe that so-called IT programming engineers at Garmin can’t figure this out. Come on, guys... it’s a $400 watch and it should work. All notifications (text messages, FB Messenger, incoming calls, etc) work fine. No ability to respond on iOS devices, though. I also had a hard time syncing my Amazon Music account directly to the watch, but it finally worked on attempt #7. It works fine, and is a nice feature. I can easily use the controls to play music from my phone, however. I always have my phone with me on runs, so it’s not a big deal for me. Running the music from the watch itself uses a lot of battery juice, so I’ll keep my music on the phone. Once I got over all of that, I do enjoy the fitness functions a lot. The watch faces are customizable, and easy to read even in direct sunlight. Way more options than even the newest Apple 5 Watch. The always- on feature is great. Overall, I’ll keep it because of the tremendous fitness tracking, but I’m a little disappointed in the lack of smart watch functionality.

Garmin hit it out of the park with this watch. The overall case design is sharp, and can be worn to formal events. Personally, I prefer a traditional round watch face as opposed to Apple's design. Next, the screen is very bright and easy to read in direct sunlight. The DPI of the screen is quite high which is a big step for Garmin. As expected, all of the telemetry about my body and activities is well organized in Garmin Connect. I love the pulse ox and sleep tracking feature as well. It's a great watch that encourages me to go out and exercise.

This watch is just beautiful. I purchased the silver one and I love love love it! It's my first smartwatch. It's very simple to use use. You can customize it to fit your life style. Tracking is accurate. The Garmin connect app is always very easy to use. This will make you challenge yourself more in your workouts. See your progress and make improvements. You can store your music or connect it to your phone. You receive notifications right on your wrist. Again the watch is so beautiful, bright colors, and so comfortable.

This watch does what Garmin is good at (activity tracking, fitness tracking, and battery life), and takes it up a notch. All the activity tracking features work great, and some metrics seem way more accurate on this watch than on my old Vivoactive HR (floors climbed especially). Battery lasts about five days without GPS usage, and about 3-4 with a few GPS-tracked activities. For as bright and beautiful a display as this watch has, that is impressive battery life! GPS is very accurate on outdoor activities as well, perfectly following a small walking path around my local park. Haven’t tested it out on a bike ride yet, but this stuff really is Garmin’s forte. Plus, onboard music storage is now a feature, which I love. I hate having my phone with me at the gym, but I often wish I could listen to music while working out. Problem solved! Smartwatch features are fairly sparse (the ones I’ve used are calendar, viewing phone notifications, and weather) which is a positive in my books. I don’t want all those extras on my wrist! But if you do, I would look at a different type of smartwatch. It is very comfortable to wear, and the round watch face is very smart looking. And I can’t say enough about how nice the AMOLED display is! Bright, beautiful, and clear! Tons of watch faces to choose from, most of which offer a large degree of customization, and even more are available on Garmin Connect IQ. To summarize, the Venu is a major step up from my old Vivoactive HR, and does everything I want it to. Activity tracking, GPS, music, and plus it looks super sharp! It doesn’t have all the extra features, but to me the lack of fluff was a selling feature. I hope my short review helps!

First let me say that this is an actual review and I don't get any compensation for it except for the 25 BB points. I'm a big review and ratings guy. I do some decent research before I buy anything. That being said, I'll spend a few minutes hopefully helping someone else to make a decision. Should you buy this watch? Probably. I've had a lot of these 'activity' or 'smart watches' over the years and whenever anyone asks me about this, my answer is, "it depends on what you want it to do". There are prettier smart watches on the market. Fossil, Samsung, Apple - all make a sharper looking watch. But the biggest deal breaker for me with any of them is battery life. They all stink - one day, if that, with any usage. Longer if you shut off every option they have that drains battery. And for me to have to charge it every day, I'd end up forgetting to put it back on one day, and then it would happen again. Sooner or later I would just not be wearing it. A dead watch is a bracelet. The Venu will last for a good 3 days with everything on (except constant GPS and using the music feature). It fully charges in about 40 minutes. I have a plug in my car and get back up to 60-80% if I'm driving for a bit and I'm a little low. Now don't get me wrong, the Garmin Venu is a very nice looking watch in it's own right. The display is bright and sharp. There are a bunch of watch faces in the IQ store. You can even take a picture of something with your phone or save a pic from the internet and make it the phone's background. Pretty cool. The interface is good and gets better and better every year. Every once in awhile I have to swipe twice for something to work but I think that's more of a 'fat finger' thing than a watch thing. As a fitness device, it's a Garmin. The GPS stuff is legit. I don't care if the phone can track my exact footsteps - the metrics and distance are usually good. Take it golfing and it'll give you the front mid and back of the green after you download any course. You'll last the whole day with power, but you'll need a recharge soon after - but like I said, those are quick. For most other activities, the battery isn't an issue because you aren't using GPS. Walks inside and out, elliptical and sports all seem to track well. As a regular guy that isn't a fitness guy, it does everything I need and will do a whole pile of things more if I need. For the smart watch stuff, it's very good. I have a bunch of alarms set for different things and the vibrations are strong enough to get my attention every time. It has canned responses that you can choose from to reply to incoming texts. All notifications can be turned on or off on the app. And the music stuff is pretty cool too. You can download songs onto your watch, pair some bluetooth headphones to the watch and leave your phone home. Heath metrics seem good. There's all these blinking lights on the back that seem to be doing something. I find the blood ox feature interesting as well as the stress indicators, sleep tracking and a bunch of other stuff - all right on the watch. The app itself is great and clearly has all the data I want and it's easy enough to read. Bottom line? Not a fenix for crazy sports people. Not a Apple watch for smart watch. But it's not far off the best of either for me to notice. It just does everything well. And in some cases, I think better. If you need more battery, buy the Vivoactive 4 or wait for the Vivoactive 5. It's the exact same watch but has a different display that isn't as bright but will last a week. Why only 4 stars? The watch band isn't the most comfortable - plan on looking for a 20mm quick release band on Amazon. They're all more comfortable. This one will last fine but its not great. But all this together, I think this watch is the best option for most people.

Love my Garmin Venu watch. It stores music making it so easy to listen to your favorite tunes while working out. I love the touch screen and all the ways it measures fitness. GPS works great, color is very vivid, and battery life is pretty good. The garmin app is great too and watch syncing is fast.

I bought this to replace my applewatch that I was not using to its full capability. I wanted something good for running and I knew Garmin was a reputable brand. I still wanted to have some smartwatch capabilities so I went with the Venu. In the "smartwatch" department it was a downgrade and I was ok with that. Here are some pros: -Reliable (I've never lost any data) -Great exercise data and I sync mine with strava for running, walking and golf. Automatically syncs as soon as I get near my phone. -I decided to get spotify premium so I could listen to music while I run without my phone. I haven't had any issues with sound quality. Cons: -takes a bit to get used to its controls -touch screen doesn't compare with the applewatch -smartwatch capabilities aren't anything comparable to applewatch. -controls take some time to get used to.

Sleep Tracking is super inaccurate compared to FitBit. The Hydration logging doesn’t get stored after midnight if you don’t sync your watch before midnight. Garmin support says I would have to sync daily. Additionally, it doesn’t display half cups within Hydration anymore. The software developers really dropped the ball with storing data for all the inputs. However, having Bluetooth, Storage (3.5 GB), Spotify and GPS means you can go for runs without your phone. Watch band is comfortable and adjustable.